Student experience and tertiary expectations: factors predicting academic literacy amongst first‐year pharmacy students

Abstract

Enhancing student performance in the first year and increasing retention rates have become important priorities for universities, resulting in a focus on support, especially for students deemed ‘at risk’. Research suggests the importance of entry pathways into university and academic literacy for successful progression. However, there is little research on the relationship between academic literacy levels and students' self‐evaluation of their written communication skills. The current study, using a first‐year cohort in undergraduate pharmacy, investigated the relationship between students' academic literacy skills, their previous writing experiences and their self‐evaluations of their own literacy. As well as confirming the relationship between entry pathways and literacy performance, this study found length of text written before students entered the University of Sydney to be a salient variable. Students also were more realistic when evaluating specific literacy skills than when providing a more general evaluation of their written communication skills, which has implications for their preparedness to access available support.